


They are Safe in Each Other

by magikfanfic



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Backstory, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Pre-Rogue One, light on porn light on plot heavy with words, this got a little Stephen King at the end which is to say resolved poorly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 11:20:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9654380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: Hands. There are hands in new places, and Baze thinks this is how he will die: with Chirrut’s hands exploring his upper thighs in their slow, fastidious manner.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know. Don't look at me. This is why I don't write porn.

Hands. There are hands in new places, and Baze thinks this is how he will die: with Chirrut’s hands exploring his upper thighs in their slow, fastidious manner without ever having touched his cock. It is deliciously infuriating, and the only response he can make is a strained, captured little sound deep in his throat that makes Chirrut laugh at him in that high, reedy giggle he has as he presses his lips at the spot behind Baze’s earlobe. If they were anywhere else, if they were doing anything other than being explicitly wrapped around each other, Baze would be mad at being laughed at, but right now it has no power to anger him. It has power--everything Chirrut does has power--but this is the sort that goes right up his spine with fire-tipped fingers, the kind that makes his cock twitch, and his head spin. 

He can’t remember what led them to be in this position right now. They are supposed to be working, and there are forgotten texts that he smuggled out of the library spilled across the floor. Baze worries that the pages might get stained or crumbled; they are old books, little treasures that the temple has, and he has only been allowed to see them because he is dutiful and devoted and good, but then he catches a glimpse of Chirrut’s lips and his head canted just so, and Baze swears that he has never been good a day in his life and doesn’t care. If Chirrut will keep sucking marks down his neck and over his chest, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even matter about the books on the floor and what might happen to them. That is how completely lost he can become in this man.

This is the fourth time in two weeks they have been locked together like this, touching, kissing, chasing each other’s moans down to swallow them before they blossom fully in the air. This is different from the small looks and touches, the kisses they have been sharing for years. There is something more to it now, and Baze isn’t sure when that changed, when one of them--Chirrut, it is always Chirrut--decided to kick the door open. Each time takes them a little further toward something. Baze isn’t even sure exactly towards what. He is twenty, Chirrut is nineteen. They have both lived in this temple since they were young, and neither of them has ever. His mind stutters, falters, sticks on the word, and he backs away from it as he always does. If this keeps happening, he is eventually going to have to face it. The big question of what next. What they are doing, where this is going. 

Baze pulls back slightly, shifts his hips in an effort to release some of the tension that has built up in his groin though it doesn’t work, to look at Chirrut. Chirrut who can sit anywhere. Chirrut who can be comfortable on anything. Chirrut who laces his fingers together on Baze’s chest, settles his chin on those hands and then just gazes at him with something open in his eyes that Baze would call adoration on anyone else. On Chirrut, though, it looks like something else. Or maybe he is just not ready to accept that idea from his friend. The spry little fighter who never keeps still and picks fights with people simply because he is bored. The man who teases him for studying but will then dutifully braid his hair while Baze reads.

Chirrut whose love seems thick, but whose attention can be as fleeting as the chime of his laughter in the air, first peeling out like bells and then switching to something sharp as he launches into anger. Flighty. Little trickster bird always preening. Baze has seen every inch of him thanks to a lifetime spent trapped in his orbit. Even when he was awkward, all skinny legs and too long arms, Chirrut was never shy about his form or who looked. It’s different now. This is a different kind of seeing. It includes hands and tongues and breath expelled across flushing skin. Heated skin. Sweat slicked skin that glistens when the weak rays of the sun spill into their room. Now he knows how those muscles feel sliding under flesh in something other than a fight. Now he knows the full extent of Chirrut’s vocabulary, filthy and lascivious and daring. Baze has no idea where Chirrut picked up half those words, but the mere utterance of them will almost send him to his knees as all the blood in his body fights over whether it’s going to flow to his face or his dick. And Chirrut, entirely too clever for anyone’s good, knows this, and uses it to his advantage, whispers these things into Baze’s ear at all the wrong times or just bites his knuckle, a throwaway thing, but still something that can make the older man aware of every drape of fabric on him and what it looks like when it’s off.

A stronger man, Baze thinks, would turn to prayer. A stronger man, a devout, good man would not put lingering in this embrace above everything else. Baze thought, when he was younger, that he would be that sort of man. They had always been close, even then, but the years and hormones and those first little touches in the night, those experimental kisses have gotten out of control, have taken on a life all of their own. Baze needs two bodies. One to devote to the Whills, one to devote to Chirrut. 

Chirrut, top of the class. Chirrut, trickster boy. Chirrut, better already than half the masters. Chirrut who can sing to the crystals. He can easily juggle everything. Baze has watched him with big, astonished eyes. If he didn’t know better, he would claim that Chirrut could not have time to sleep, but he does. He sleeps in fits and starts, tucked against Baze’s side nightly. None of his tasks ever seem to suffer, all of his balls stay in the air. Baze isn’t sure how it’s possible, and Chirrut always just laughs when he asks. “You’re with me all the time. I don’t have any secrets. You would know them already.”

It’s true. Baze has always been the shadow, always at least three steps behind and constantly hurrying to keep up. Why was that so important? Why was it so necessary to stay in the light of Chirrut’s sun and his smile? Why would he be willing to give up everything if this man asked him to? It scares him. As much as that look in Chirrut’s eyes, which he has seen flickering there in subtly different incarnations since they were children but could never completely understand.

Your eyes look like the kyber sounds, he wants to say. It rests there on the tip of his tongue, unsaid and stupid. So stupid. Baze is no poet, though he has read every volume he can get his hands on looking for the best stanza to describe the way his heart stutters, kicks, the way the world goes too slow and honey colored when Chirrut rolls onto his back, exposing every inch of his bright, wanton chest. 

Baze is so deeply in love by this point that it would be embarrassing if he could get enough perspective to see it.

And Chirrut is Chirrut, lazy, looking up at him with dark eyes and his too big smile that exposes his gums. It makes him look older and younger than his nineteen years. It reminds Baze of running through the Jedhan markets after him because Chirrut snuck out to buy spice and then ended up in a fight with the members of the biggest street gang around. A street gang who didn’t mind trying to beat up on a child, an initiate of the temple who was in full robes. Baze tried to talk their way out of it for exactly one minute before squaring his shoulders and jumping into the fray. They both came home with bloody noses, but Chirrut got his spice. Until the masters took it away as a punishment for, well, so many things. But the spice found it’s way to the kitchen and ended up in the food, which was all that Chirrut wanted in the first place.

What a life, Baze thinks, to be so lucky that you win even when you lose.

“Where are you?” Chirrut asks using an ancient form of you that Baze unearthed in his studies. It's for someone familiar, closer than friend, different than family. They use it from time to time but only with each other, and it never fails to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand up with the electricity of that intimacy. 

Baze reaches a hand down to run it over Chirrut’s hair, close cropped forever. Sometimes he considers suggesting Chirrut grow it out, but he doubts it would look right. Still. It would give him something to twine his fingers into, something solid to hold on his quick as a wink man. His. The word is probably not right, but he does not want to surrender it to something less. No, he will keep it. He will think it and never speak it, like so many other things.

Chirrut makes the frustrated noise, the one Baze has heard countless times when he is not quick enough or not paying enough attention, the noise that Chirrut makes when he has to do a task he does not like. Impatient, this man, like sunlight. Golden like it too. He tips his head and drags teeth and lips across Baze’s chest, and that is almost enough to make him come right then and there because no matter how many times Chirrut touches him, he never expects it to feel like that. The hand on his head slips down to hold the back of Chirrut’s neck, clenching lightly to impart just a bit of pressure. There is laughter against his belly. “There you are.”

It doesn’t surprise Baze that Chirrut is the talkative one in this endeavor of theirs as well. Baze has always let him lead when it comes to words, communicating. Baze has a thick tongue, and he tends to get lost in his thoughts. When he speaks, he doesn’t like what comes out or he talks too low for people to hear him. He worries about them laughing at him, how slow and ponderous he is. No amount of poetry reading have made him quicker, wittier. He is only comfortable with Chirrut. That is the only time he can talk about everything he has read, and though the other man’s mind works as quick as the gears that makes the droids in the city go, he never makes Baze feels slow. He simply listens, braids Baze’s hair so his fingers have something to do--Chirrut always needs to be doing something physical if he isn’t meditating--and sits. When they are alone together, when Baze is talking, Chirrut suddenly has manners. He doesn’t cut him off to interject some strange point that is likely not even true. No, he is quiet and respectful. He is serene, curled up and warm, like a cat lounging on a person it has claimed.

“Stop,” Chirrut says, and his voice is impossibly close, as he has somehow miraculously moved without jarring either of them from Baze’s chest to be curled next to his side, lips ghosting against the pulse point on his neck. And those fingertips, strangely soft considering all the training and work they are put through, are on his lower abdomen again, tracing the thick muscle there, so close and yet still so far from his cock that Baze makes a pitiful noise. “You keep drifting,” he admonishes softly, the way someone would chide a pet for being too warm, too comfortable on their lap when they need to move. “What do I need to do to ground you?”

That last question could set him into a labyrinth of thoughts he would never escape if he lets it. So he doesn’t. Baze just takes a deep breath, focuses on the warmth of skin and the way the sun catches Chirrut’s eyes, reflects from them like he is something precious, and turns, moves, acts. Sorry is on his lips as he pulls Chirrut to him, claims his mouth. Sorry, love, the words are present when he presses his tongue into that perfect mouth, tracing those teeth that show when he smiles too big. I love you. You are everything. You are lightning and fire and the winds and the sand and the rain. You burn me and calm me and comfort me. You confuse me. I never want you to leave. I worry you will. These are the sentiments, the intentions he feeds into the touches, the kisses. It’s a quiet, desperate sort of begging, this yearning. If anyone in the entire Temple could pick up on them, it would be Chirrut, he thinks, but Chirrut never seems to. Or never mentions them if he does. Baze is glad of this because he doesn’t know what he would do if faced with his own failing, this consuming need. 

Chirrut moves against him, solid and lithe, metal under fine silk, and Baze groans full into his mouth, which makes Chirrut sigh. “I like that,” he whispers, once they are out of the kiss and panting and the hands are wandering and Baze feels like he may just die right there because Chirrut’s fingers keeps sweeping near his cock but never settle. Baze lets Chirrut define how far they go, how much they do. They are both lost and stumbling for next steps, but Chirrut is the leader. Baze follows. This is how they work. “What do I have to do to get you to make that noise again? It makes my veins hurt.”

Baze doesn’t understand what that means. There are so many ways he could take it. Veins flood through the body. He has traced some of them over the course of Chirrut’s flesh with his tongue, following them, blue and buried, where he could locate them under that golden flush. They all flow to the heart. Even when he loses them, too far beneath the surface to point him in the right direction, that is where he ends up anyway, trying to ingrain himself there by pressing kisses on the skin, pushing his intentions through skin and muscle and blood and bone and all the little things put together that create Chirrut, that make Chirrut what he is, who he is. Bright, golden, impatient, infuriating, lovely, terrifying.

If someone asked him to describe Chirrut to them, Baze would never run out of words. Provided that he could find his voice to begin speaking them.

He makes another noise, this one almost feral, as Chirrut’s hands slide into his hair, twist into the strands. Baze can’t help it, closes his eyes so he can better focus on the tug that sends daggers of pleasure pain down his spine to his toes. The huff of Chirrut’s smugness only makes that feeling twist, intensify. Suddenly, he wants to catch Chirrut off guard. He wants to test the limits of this tenuous, ever altering compact of theirs, take the first move on something. Baze does not always want to follow. 

Even with his eyes closed, even with his mind swimming, his fingers know how to trace Chirrut’s chest in the dark. They have done that many nights, just hands exploring softly in safe spaces, learning how strange it is, how different their bodies can be despite the fact that they train together, eat together, sleep together, practically think together. If Chirrut’s touch can be likened to fire, feathers, light, things ephemeral and fleeting, then Baze feels like his touch is stone, rain, cold. He drags rather than dances, grips instead of teasing. Baze leaves bruises on accident, which Chirrut laughs off and adores. “I like seeing your hands on me when they aren’t,” he will tease when Baze apologizes for a yellowing fingerprint next to his navel. This doesn’t assuage how badly Baze feels for ruining the perfection, though he himself cannot deny how much he likes it when Chirrut marks him with dark pink, purple kisses sucked all over.

Now, though, his touches skirt, don’t settle heavy handed the way they normally do. Baze has worked up the courage to attempt something, and he needs to follow through on it while the impulse runs kyber bright in his veins. If he falters, if he overthinks it, the way he overthinks practically everything except fighting and loving Chirrut, he will lose that bravery. He does not ignore the fingers twisted in his hair or the lips back to work on his neck, all of those sensations are making him clench his jaw so tight it will probably still hurt tomorrow, but he is not disappearing into them, settling into inaction, the way he can.

They have shed all their clothing except for the underclothes, everything from head to toe is bare except the most intimate things. It has been an unspoken contract that they don’t mention this area, don’t explore, pretend to ignore the press of erections that cannot really be denied. Every time they have finished their explorations, lips swollen from kissing, both hard and aching but not acknowledging it, trying to curl up to sleep instead of continuing the lazy, heated touching, Baze will force himself not to think about what Chirrut’s cock will feel like in his fingers or how his would feel in Chirrut’s. That kind of thinking leads to not sleeping, gazing at the ceiling, willing himself unhard while Chirrut is curled next to his side, sleep talking and twitching, gorgeous always. Chirrut teases him for meditating so much in bed, and Baze is always ashamed to admit why. It’s not as though he can touch himself while Chirrut is there. He doesn’t know what Chirrut does with his own erection, which he has felt press against his leg or his back, making the air in his chest stutter at the mere thought of it, but he also has never caught the other masturbating so he has deduced that Chirrut must be so arcane as to be able to force the blood out of his cock at a moment’s notice with the power of his mind.

Now, though, he has a clear goal in mind, and he is trying very hard not to let himself be distracted by the purposeful, lovely definition of muscles that his fingers are tracing. Lower, lower. He tries not to think about it too much, focuses instead on how warm Chirrut’s body is, how pristine even with the scars. Those little imperfections are what makes it, though. That and the fact that Baze can tell the story behind each and every one. The real stories. Not the little fantasies that Chirrut likes to dream up because it amuses him. “No one likes a liar,” Baze had chided him one day after Chirrut told a younger initiate how he had been stabbed with a kyber crystal by someone trying to loot the temple. In reality, the scar was from a misjudged leap. “Ah, but everyone loves a story,” Chirrut had countered, tapping Baze’s nose with one finger and then tweaking his ear, laughing all the while.

It takes too long for him to realize that Chirrut has stopped kissing, stopped tugging his hair, stopped moving. Baze can hear his breathing, ragged, and feel his heart, quick like a bird, and wonders if he should stop. His plan had been to do this before the other realized what he was doing. So much attention can stymie his plans, make him doubt his actions. He is not used to leading, and he worries that he has misstepped in this dance, that Chirrut will whirl him onto his back, plant a foot on his chest and declare him the loser.

This is not what happens. Instead, Chirrut’s voice, cracked, so uncharacteristically unsure, fills the air around them. “Don’t stop,” he says. A benediction, a prayer. It’s enough to make Baze’s head swim, to almost lose him in the tide of warming himself in the way those words sound, the fact that he can make Chirrut sound like that. Chirrut, who seems so untouched by so many things and dances through life as though it were a dream of soft colored silks, who can get his nose punched in deservedly and laugh through it without losing his breath. And he has made Chirrut sound like this. By touching him. It is everything he never knew he wanted, wrapped up and given to him. The best present in the universe.

“Baze.” Fingers on his lips, demanding whine in the way his name is said, pleading and reminding and just. Grounding. There are so many things he would linger on. The whine puts him back in motion, locks his focus in on one thing for the moment, keeping Chirrut on this edge.

It takes hours, it take minutes, it take no time at all for his fingers to traverse the planes of Chirrut’s body and ghost over his hard cock through the cloth. His touch is tentative and dulled by the fabric, but it still pulls a noise so loud from Chirrut that it feels like a lightning strike. Baze pauses for a moment, breath stilled in his throat, convinced that someone will be coming through the door any second to see what terrible thing has happened. Baze thinks about the sight they will find, books on the floor, clothes in an ungainly pile, Chirrut flushed rose gold with a mouth full of swears, Baze with skin strewn in bruises like flowers, fingers experimentally tracing the length of his best friend’s erection. The idea of being so caught is almost enough to make his heart stop. That would forever be the end of Baze Malbus, devoted initiate, soon to be Guardian, all around good monk, wouldn’t it?

Does he care? Does he even care?

It’s a question he can’t answer. It’s too big, and too much is clamoring for his attention. The important thing is that no one crashes through the door, no one knocks, no one seems to have noticed at all, and that is as surprising as the sound itself. How can no one know that his world has flung itself off its axis? How is this not the most important moment in the entire galaxy? Why is he the only one able to appreciate the gravity of the situation? Him and Chirrut. Chirrut whose face he takes a moment to appreciate because the other has his eyes closed, and his mouth open, tongue caught between his teeth, flush high and bright on his cheeks. Here is the image that is going to shake Baze’s soul apart for the next day until potentially forever. Normally always talking, never shaken Chirrut looking like he is about to come undone. That is all the incentive that Baze needs, that is all the bravery. 

His fingers continue lower, pushing under the fabric until skin touches skin, and they make a variation on the same noise simultaneously, a long rush of held in breath, though Chirrut’s sticks more in his throat and goes up at the end, begging without words. Baze leans in to kiss him even as his fingers tighten around the warm flesh of his cock, softer than his and thinner. Chirrut whimpers into the kiss but returns it hungrily. His hands are balled into the sheets, and Baze catches one of them with his free hand and twines their fingers together as he slips his tongue into Chirrut’s mouth in the same instant that he give his cock an experimental tug. 

If there was a line in the sand, if there was a border keeping him from losing his balance and falling into this completely, it has been obliterated by the soft, hungry sounds he manages to pull from Chirrut, by the feel of his flesh, silky, the head damp with pre-come when he swipes his thumb over it, and the way the other’s face looks so radiant. It is not like Chirrut to be so docile, and it is not like Baze to take the initiative like this so they are both caught out. Neither of them is complaining, though Chirrut is shifting in that impatient way of his that means he wants more of something. 

Baze pushes at the cloth, wanting to eradicate the last bit between them, and Chirrut shifts to help, however he keeps their hands locked tight together as though afraid what might happen if they break apart. The contact, the anchor, is welcome. When Chirrut’s eyes find his, they are wild. Not the jumping off buildings wild or the running through the corridors laughing wild. This is an entirely new version that Baze has never seen before, and it makes his heart clench out of time. “Don’t ever stop,” Chirrut says, and his voice is rough and husky like he has been shouting. Baze falls in love with its timbre. Will he ever stop finding things about Chirrut to fall in love with? Does he want to? The answer to both, he thinks, is no.

Chirrut kicks the underclothes away and now there is nothing to hide the planes of his body from Baze’s view. No modicum of modesty, no pretense of separation between them. Baze lifts his fingers from Chirrut’s cock, and the other makes a noise of loud protest that makes Baze chuckle as much as it makes the muscles in his back contract. “Be patient,” he rumbles, and the words are met with the kind of long, suffering sigh that one might expect if he had asked Chirrut to go and change the rotation of the moon. Baze uses those fingers to gently push on Chirrut’s raised shoulder, prompting him to roll onto his back instead of his side.

Instead of moving diligently, which is what Baze would do if their positions were reversed, without question, without hesitation, Chirrut looks at him with those eyes, shrewd and deep and searching, always searching, on the hunt for new information or new stories or new adventures. Chirrut might leap from things recklessly, but he looks first even if what he sees doesn’t seem to line up with what exists. Baze understands. This is new territory for both of them, and Chirrut isn’t completely sure what is happening either. If he spoke a word of protest, made a sound or gave any indication that he wasn’t okay with what was happening, Baze would stop in an instant and never speak of any of it again. Chirrut doesn’t do that, though. He just looks, the arch of one eyebrow a question that isn’t voiced but doesn’t need to be.

Baze waves the free hand in the air, stupidly, as though trying to gather explanations there instead of using his voice. “I want to look at you,” he finally says, and that gets Chirrut moving, all smiles and spread limbs, he even snakes his hand free from Baze’s so he can fold both of them behind his head to make the view more complete. He radiates smugness in this moment, and Baze would be tempted to tickle him just to spite him if he weren’t so entranced by the perfection of all the skin. And his cock. Which is where his eyes keep lingering.

Chirrut hums, the nervous hum that signals he has nothing to do and isn’t sure what to do now. Baze doesn’t hear that hum often, and he settles one hand on the other’s hip, fingers splayed out, a reassuring weight. He is working on instinct here, something larger and more knowing than he is perhaps. The Force, Chirrut might demand if Baze mentioned it, but he’s not sure this is what the Force is about, helping guide his hands as he traces fingers down his best friend’s skin. “I told you not to stop,” Chirrut chides although he doesn’t move, just stays where he is, hands behind his heads, eyes like hot coals that watch Baze’s every move. He looks perfectly calm, perfectly serene, but there is a line of tension in his jaw, and he is licking his lips more than normal. Baze has lived in his orbit for years, Baze has studied Chirrut as surely as he has studied any of the tomes on the floor, so he knows the tells and the tics better than anyone.

“Are you in awe of my body? I know it’s a lot to take in, but you’ve seen it before.” Ah, yes, the chatter. Baze is used to this, too. It’s an invitation for him to growl and grumble and stop the talk by kissing him. It’s an easy invitation for them to settle back into a routine instead of striking out for new ground. This, then, is his out. If he wants it. They can both overstep their bounds, get into areas outside of their comfort zone. The other is supposed to provide an out. If needed. And they never use it against each other later. Safety is offered, they are safe in each other. That is the promise.

Baze does not answer. Baze not make any indication that he has recognized what Chirrut is doing. Instead he moves, settles himself between Chirrut’s splayed legs--and that makes Chirrut stop talking, makes him swallow audibly--and hunkers in such a fashion that he can press a kiss against Chirrut’s shaft, light, barely there, just the brush of lips over skin as heated and smooth as the luxurious fabrics that they rarely see in the temple or even in the stalls of the marketplace, textiles too rich for Jedha but offered up freely here. And Chirrut is shocked silent, his mouth open and eyes closed when Baze sneaks a glance up at him. That is a lovely picture. There are many lovely pictures here, but Baze cannot let himself get caught up in them.

Turning his attention back to Chirrut, he licks a line from his pubic hair to the head of his cock, and the strangled utterance of a particularly foul curse that falls unbidden from the other’s lips is enough to make his own trapped erection pulse painfully. It also eggs him on because there is suddenly nothing he wants more in the entire universe than to watch Chirrut, carefully put together and always calm even when angry or fighting or causing havoc, to come completely unraveled because of something he does. He presses more kisses to the flushed skin, runs his tongue over the head and the sides, his hands gripping Chirrut’s hips, thumbs tracing back and forth over the flesh because he needs something to do with his hands. 

Chirrut is trying to be still. Chirrut is trying to be quiet. Baze can tell by the hard little twists, the way the muscle tenses, the way his breathing sounds choked and constricted in his throat. Most of the time, Baze traps the other’s moans in his mouth so that they do not make too much noise. Now that Baze’s mouth is occupied elsewhere, Chirrut has to control his own volume level, and he is not doing the best job of it. Baze wants more. The high, breathy, barely controlled noises are making his heart flutter and his erection pulse. All he wants is to pull more from Chirrut, see him unwound and flailing.

Baze takes the other into his mouth not entirely sure what to do, but Chirrut either doesn’t seem to notice or doesn’t care because the moment he is enveloped, his hands have fisted into Baze’s hair, and he is biting off a moan that hisses into Baze’s name spilled into and echoing through the room. It is getting dark, the light is no longer making Chirrut’s skin glow. Now it is just the flush and the sweat from their exertions. He is still just as lovely. 

Chirrut’s thighs are shaking a little, and Baze figures that is a sign that it will not be long before he makes the other come. He sucks gently, tongue on the underside of Chirrut’s cock as he does so, and he relishes the weight of it in his mouth, the feel of it smooth and slick. And he loves Chirrut’s reactions to the act as well, the cursing and the tight hands in his hair, the gasping, the eyes clenched shut so tight that Baze wonders if the other is seeing stars. He slides his mouth off Chirrut, which is met with an angry noise like a startled cat, and presses his mouth into the crease of Chirrut’s groin, bites lightly there, and is awarded a full body shudder and another twitch of those fingers in his hair. He could come from that sensation alone, he thinks, the sharp tug that laces down his body. 

“Come for me, love,” he whispers, the words out before he can censor them, and the flush that spreads across his cheeks is instant and burning. Hopefully Chirrut has not heard. Hopefully Chirrut is too washed away in sensations to do anything as small as simply listen to Baze’s words. It’s a fool thought, of course. If there is anything in the universe that Chirrut has proven he does time and again, it is listen to Baze’s words. He may not heed them hardly ever, but he always listens.

Baze takes him back into his mouth, eliciting another moan that will hopefully stop any comment that Chirrut might have been preparing. He’s still not entirely sure what the best thing to do is, but he decides on a rhythm and being careful not to use teeth although when he swallows around Chirrut’s cock, unintentionally, he is rewarded with a cry, hands tightening in his hair again, and a spasm as Chirrut comes. And Baze just swallows because he didn’t plan for this, but it seems like the right thing to do. Then he pulls away slowly, gently, which is good because Chirrut is breathing fast and hard and untangles his hands when he feels Baze shift, bringing them up to cover his face. 

Baze watches him for a moment, watches him and wishes that he had been paying attention earlier, the moment when Chirrut came. He missed it. He missed that instant of undoing, and this looks an awful lot like Chirrut putting himself back together. And there are the words that Baze is concerned about. He’s not sure this is going to happen again. He’s not sure what it all means. If they were on a precipice before, he has tipped them over it; now they are falling. Also he is still very hard, but he’s not thinking about that right now because he’s just too busy worrying if he broke it all in his dumb, fleeting moment of following his instincts.

Then Chirrut stretches, languidly, lazily, reaches a hand out and just tugs at him, tugs at any part of him that he can reach like it matters very, very much for him to touch him. Baze follows as usual, clambers up and presses himself to Chirrut’s side, unsure what is going to happen next. Chirrut turns so that they are chest to chest and practically nose to nose. There is that expression in his eyes again, the openness that Baze could easily swim through and lodge there for eons. Maybe one day he will know what it means. 

Chirrut’s hand is resting on his thigh in a new way. It feels possessive and intimate and heavier. This is not one of Chirrut’s light, flickering touches. This is steady, soothing, like the other man has finally figured something out. “Say it again,” he demands and the fingers on his thigh press insistently even as he shifts closer. Baze isn’t sure how they can be any closer. They are already sharing breath, his hair is sticking everywhere because they are both covered in rapidly cooling sweat. He is sure that if he took the time to check, their hearts would be coming into sync one beat at a time. 

“Chirrut?” He needs explanation here. It’s not fair that he has made Chirrut come and the other is still mentally aware enough to dance circles around him. There goes the hope of ever besting him, he supposes. Also the last thing that he said doesn’t make sense to repeat. It’s no longer presently happening. Unless the other man means the last word, the word that Baze is very purposefully not approaching for a lot of reasons.

“Say,” Chirrut kisses him, lingers, presses his tongue into his mouth greedily, and Baze is not going to ever complain about that, but he is not sure what the other seems to be seeking out unless it is the taste of himself still on Baze’s tongue. If it is that. Just the thought of it makes his hips shift toward the other man a little, a motion that cannot be disguised when they are this close, when Chirrut’s hand is on his thigh, fingers pressing into the bulk. Chirrut breaks away, panting, eyes wild again, to finish his thought, “Say it again.” When Baze just looks at him, brow furrowed, Chirrut groans and snaps his teeth at Baze’s lower lip without biting. “Love,” he says, and there is a shakiness to his voice that Baze thought he would never hear. 

Baze is tempted to shift away, but he’s also worried that once he opens a chasm it can never be filled again. “That was,” he starts, stops, clear his throat, looks down at the sheet, looks askance at Chirrut’s hair. But Chirrut keeps moving his head, keeps getting into his field of vision so that there is nowhere to look other than those deep eyes. Baze thinks of the pool in the kyber caves the masters took them to when they were young. No one knows how deep the pool is because it seems to go straight to the core of Jedha. Chirrut’s eyes are like that. He sighs, licks his lips, which is Chirrut’s habit painted back on him over the years, and goes to palm his face because he can’t look, but Chirrut catches the hand and looks dismayed when he pulls it away.

“I can’t talk about this and look at you,” Baze persists, and that is hurt stretched raw on Chirrut’s face so he rushes to fill the void. “I won’t be able to get the words. I’ll just get distracted.”

“You’re talking fine now.” There’s a little rock in those words, and Baze remembers that kyber crystals not only sing, but they are used to make some of the deadliest weapons in the galaxy. Chirrut huffs, a spoiled child, a coddled cat. Someone else might be infuriated, Baze is only infatuated by the noise, wonders what it would be like to roll it around his mouth, wonders if it would taste the same as Chirrut’s essence, still a lingering note in the back of his throat.

“I,” Baze starts but is then cut off.

“What did you think we were doing?” he demands, hotly, and Baze always forgets how quick that laughter can turn to anger even though he has seen it a hundred times. It makes Chirrut even more attractive, makes his eyes spark and his skin seem to glow. Chirrut can glow in a hundred different ways, like a sun. Baze only ever seems to reflect light, like a moon.

His voice remains steady, practiced. Baze is the patient one, after all, the sensible one. That is what the masters have said. There is anger in him, but it is so far buried, so many levels down, and it takes so much to anger him that it barely seems to exist at all. It only erupts when something he loves is endangered. “I don’t know. I didn’t know how to ask. I wasn’t.” He falters because the next words will earn him a chiding. He didn’t want to ask because he didn’t want to lose it. 

“You think I am incapable of knowing how you feel?” Chirrut asks, and his voice and eyes have softened. Mercurial. Fickle. Flighty. Lovely. “Strong Baze Malbus. Big Baze Malbus. Towering, hulking, quiet. Sits on the floor, reads books, plays with the children when no one is looking, wears braids and bells and flowers in his hair because I put them there. Baze Malbus who once broke the nose of a man who justifiably swung at me after I made him out to be the fool everyone knew he was. You are far from impossible to read. It is like someone wrote letters across the expanse of the desert and expected me to not be able to see them.” He clicks his tongue, but it is soft and not at all dismissive. “You surprise no one.”

Baze feels laid open, his insides spread out for all to see, but the all is just Chirrut. Still. He thought that, perhaps, there were some things he could stow away from the other man. Like his bleeding, burning, yearning heart. “You looked surprised when I put your cock in my mouth,” he says, bluntly, to change the subject.

The curse that pulls from Chirrut’s throat is enough to make Baze press forward and put his mouth on the other man’s neck. For a moment, it seems to work, distracting them both from anything more serious. The hand on Baze’s thigh moves incrementally lower, and his erection reminds him that it is still there in full effect. Especially when Chirrut palms him through his underclothes, and he makes a sound that seems inhuman, a rumble that vibrates the entire room. 

“You.” Chirrut is now alternating between touches and words, and Baze is having a hard time concentrating on either as his attention switches. “Love.” His fingers slip between the cloth. “Me.” Baze comes almost as soon as the hand wraps around him because there has been a lot of buildup, and his will is not made of steel. 

“You love me,” Chirrut repeats again, his voice just so. Smug and smiling and proud. As if he has won something for figuring it out and putting words to it. As if he is warmed by the knowledge. 

Baze is on that edge of conscious from over-stimulation. He is overwrought and newly spent, and he is not sure that he can multi-task like this right now. Not when Chirrut is there, a vision before his eyes, a vision who has his come on his fingers and is very slowly licking it off one digit at a time after making the declaration that he knows Baze loves him. This, then, must be his punishment for not being a good, devoted monk. This, then, must be what he is going to have to endure, the burden he will carry. It does not seem nearly as bad as he had feared.

Chirrut finishes licking his fingers, and that carnal act makes Baze’s cock stir slightly even though it should definitely be quiet now. “Leave me be,” he grouses, only half stern, but that isn’t going to do any good. Not with Chirrut. It never has, not since the first time they met, and Baze somehow fell into one of his escapades after another. 

“I love you, too. I was just waiting for you to say it first.” Chirrut makes sure to use that ancient form of you each time.

Baze estimates that he goes through sixteen different emotions in five seconds as he tries to figure out how to react to what Chirrut has just told him. The off handed way that the other man just admits to it is the same flippant way that he reacts to everything. It shouldn’t catch him off guard, but it does. Trust Chirrut to be so glib with it when the exact same feeling has been rending him apart. Though that was because he did not know if it was reciprocated and, according to Chirrut, he has known everything always. “What? Why?” he finally manages to sputter out when he can form words again.

Chirrut taps a finger on his nose and then reaches into the tangle of hair, which is his fault, to tug at his ear. “To win a bet.”

When Baze starts to laugh, Chirrut grins the too bright gum smile that managed to worm its way into Baze’s heart years ago. The last rays of the sun have caught his face, making it glow again, just as lovely as always. Baze pulls him close, tucks the other man against his chest, and rests his arm around his waist. It is another spontaneous act of intimacy, but it feels right. All of this feels right. It feels much like when he found that word, that ancient form of you that had been dropped so many years ago. It feels like opening a door and realizing that the very thing he needed had been right in front of him all along if only he opened up his eyes to see it.

Chirrut is pressing kisses into his chest, which makes Baze’s laughter start to hitch in his throat again. Oh, this man. He will gladly fall forever for him. For that quick wit, that smile, the way he thinks he just knows everything and will not admit when he is wrong. The way he can lift weights from Baze’s shoulders with a small silly gesture or will sit patiently and braid his hair. His hair. “You have to fix my hair,” he complains, tone gruff, but then it melts into a gasp as Chirrut sucks another purple blossom onto his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang out with me on [](http://sarkastically.tumblr.com/>Tumblr</a>%20if%20you%20want.)


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